"RESIDENT EVIL" (reviewed by OG)

There’s this sequence in the first Resident Evil Playstation game that features the heroine, Claire Redfield, creeping up behind a guy who seems to be chewing on something at his feet. He slowly turns around, revealing a decayed face marred with blood and the flesh of the human being he’s been dining on. At that point, I dropped the game controller and proceeded to soil myself. A fucking game, of all things, had proven to be more frightening than most horror films.

It wasn’t until the sequel to that game came out, however, that Resident Evil started finding its rhythm. In that one, you’re left in the middle of a burned out, desolate Raccoon city, armed only with a few guns and a prayer. Zombies roam the streets, along with some other unnatural creatures that literally make your skin crawl when facing them. All in all, RE sparked a revolution in game play.

So here comes the movie, based on the video game. Here’s something we’ve heard before, only to get dick-slapped with some half-assed attempt at cinema. As history would tell it, movies based on video games have just plain sucked over the last decade or so. Remember Super Mario Bros.? Yeah…me neither. Or what about the Mortal Kombat/ Mortal Kombat: Annihilation fiasco? How do you take a rated R game and convert it into a PG-13 flick without batting an eyelash? Who the fuck knows…and who the fuck cares? Either way, it all adds up to a bad track record for gamers and film buffs.

Now we’ve got Resident Evil, the movie. I know…time to start cringing, right? Well hold on, cocksucker…don’t put on the cynic’s hat just yet. This one’s actually good, full of the appropriate gore, and faithful to the game, thus breaking the aforementioned evil cycle. Hallelujah. Holy Shit. Where’s the Tylenol?

The film takes on the same scenario, with an entirely new cast of characters (smart thing, too…those geek-ass game boys would have flipped out if they didn’t get the original characters’ hairstyles just right). The Umbrella Corporation is conducting illegal viral research in the depths of Raccoon City, and when someone spills the lethal T-virus, the Red Queen (Umbrella’s defense system…here personified by a little British girl. British kids = eeeevil) kills off the entire base with nerve gas.

Enter an elite squad of military specially trained…whatever. They crash a mansion, where a young woman struck with amnesia (played by Milla Jovovich) is taken into custody, along with a man who she groggily remembers as her husband. The team (comprised of no-name actors, with the exception of The Fast and The Furious’ Michelle Rodriguez, playing a typical badass army chick) infiltrates the “Hive” below the mansion, leading them to the Umbrella Corporation’s main den of badness. Needless to say, the dumbass computer tech unwittingly releases a small army of zombies (the T-Virus tends to have the whole “undead” side effect), leading to a catastrophic stand off between the soldiers and the corpses.

Not since Day of the Dead has a film succeeded in laying down a truly claustrophobic tone in tandem with the undead (there’s even a nice homage to that film at the end of Resident Evil…keep an eye out for the newspaper!), and although the dialogue isn’t as crisp as it could have been, RESIDENT EVIL more than makes up for it in the visceral department. The zombies, as always, can only die if you shoot them in the head, thus severing contact from the brain to the spinal cord. So God bless whoever decided to turn Milla Jovovich’s character into a martial artist who specializes in (literally) breaking necks, thus adding a never-before-seen tactic useful for dispatching piles of rotting flesh. There’s the inevitable CGI-generated creature, but it doesn’t wear out its welcome until the final act. Aside from that, the film actually packs quite a punch, leading up to a final sequence that’s beautifully ripped from the video game itself.

Director Paul Anderson (who, ironically enough, directed Mortal Kombat) has created a damn fine flick which, when stripped of its minor flaws, flows as well and is as true to the source as any other successful adaptation. Let’s hope this starts a trend, especially with Duke Nuke’Em and House of the Dead heading for theaters soon…

(3.26.02)